


Empty Spaces

by as_with_a_sunbeam



Category: 19th Century CE RPF, Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: 1804, December - Freeform, F/M, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-30 05:07:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15744897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/as_with_a_sunbeam/pseuds/as_with_a_sunbeam
Summary: Hamilton's overwhelming debts necessitate the sale of his fine wardrobe soon after his death. Eliza finds she's not the only one left unsettled by the loss.





	Empty Spaces

A low, unearthly groan of pain echoed through the dark room. Eliza sighed, her eyes fluttering open as she shifted on the bed, reaching out. “I’m here,” she whispered. Her hand landed on an empty pillow where her husband’s jaw should have been.

She blinked. The room was quiet. Quiet, cold, and empty. The phantom noises were only an echo: her husband’s pained whimpers preserved perfectly by her memory to haunt her in the night. Rolling to the side, she curled up in the empty space he’d left and buried her face in his pillow. Her rosewater soap had long since overwhelmed the sweet spiced scent that used to cling to the pillowcase.

In the space of five short months, he seemed to have disappeared from her completely.

“This is good. Healthy,” Philip Jeremiah had counseled earlier as Nathaniel Pendleton and John Church raided the dressing room containing the evidence of Hamilton’s sartorial elegance: all his finely tailored suits, embroidered waistcoats, shirts, and sleepwear. Angelica’s arm rested around her shoulders consolingly even as their brother waved the two other men onward. He added to her, “I did it with Sarah’s things right away. Kept a few special things and did away with the rest. I couldn’t bear to keep looking at it all.”

His things had brought her nothing but comfort in the past months. But no one seemed interested in hearing her opinion on that point. Not when the proceeds from selling his fine wardrobe could help offset the deep debt he’d left behind.

Hamilton’s favorite deep blue, long-tailed jacket, the one that made his eyes a striking violet, landed in the pile of clothes for sale. A ratty pair of slippers she’d begged him at least a million times to throw away quickly followed, landing in the opposite pile of items to be donated or otherwise disposed of. She’d swallowed down a sob as she reached out for the slippers.

“Eliza,” her brother sighed.

“Not these. Please.” She hugged the slippers to her chest. The moth-eaten fabric smelled musty and sour.

(“They look ridiculous, and they smell,” she’d complained an eternity ago. “But they’re comfortable. And they smell like me. Are you saying I smell?” Hamilton had replied with a mischievous glint in his eyes, wiggling his foot at her without looking up from his book. “Your feet do,” she’d insisted, batting his foot away. He’d looked up finally, and made a silly face. The will to argue disappeared, replaced by the overwhelming desire to kiss him—which had likely been his intention.)  

“They’re worn to nothing. What will you do with them?” 

She hugged the slippers tighter. They’d serve no purpose whatsoever, but she couldn’t bear to imagine them rotting away in a trash heap somewhere. “I want them.”

“Why don’t we go downstairs, Bess? Hmm?” Angelica suggested. “Have some tea?”

“No,” she’d refused, shrugging her off. She’d stay and bear witness to the disposal of her husband’s possessions, no matter how it broke her heart.

Hamilton’s banyan was tossed from the dressing room, and landed squarely in the pile for sale. Her fingers brushed over the familiar soft material. How warm that fabric used to feel when she’d rub his shoulders at night, urging him to come to bed. She’d whimpered so pitifully at the memories that Pendleton had looked out at her, worry plain on his face. “Are you all right, Mrs. Hamilton?”

“No.”

“She’s fine,” Philip Jeremiah insisted. “Just keep going.”

“We needn’t sell everything, right?” Angelica had asked. “If some items are of particular sentimental value—”

“She’ll have everything in the closet if you give her the option. Keep going,” Philip Jeremiah ordered. When Eliza glared at him, he’d leaned in and kissed her forehead, his expression softening. “It’s for the best. Trust me. At least it’s not the house you’re losing.”   

The thought of losing the house made her wince. The possibility still loomed over her, an even more real and terrifying prospect in the wake of her father’s recent death. Should her finances grow too tight, she may not have a choice.   

Philip Jeremiah was watching her with earnest compassion. He truly believed the clearing out of her husband’s wardrobe was for the best, she knew. Perhaps he was even right; he was ahead of her in the grieving process after all, with Sarah having died along with their child scarcely a year before. But that didn’t stop her feeling like her heart was being torn from her chest with each item they pulled from its rightful place.  

She’d managed to save the slippers and his banyan, in the end. The banyan was wrapped around her over her nightgown, the only warmth her husband could provide to her in the cold, lonely night, and the ratty old slippers sat in their place on Hamilton’s side of the bed. The rest of his possessions, his wool coats and cashmere breeches and silk stockings, were now all downstairs, packed up in crates, awaiting a cart that would come the next day to take them off for sale in the city.

 She could feel the emptiness of the dressing room in her gut.

Sitting up, she shoved the bed curtain aside, the metal rings sliding loudly in the oppressive silence. Her feet slid easily into the old, smelly slippers. Just one more look, she promised herself, adjusting Hamilton’s banyan around herself more securely as she made her way towards the stairs.

Another haunting whimper met her ears as she descended towards the kitchens. She paused, leaning heavily against the wall, her face crumbling. But her brow wrinkled when the next whimper was accompanied by a distinct scratching sound.

Moving down the last few steps, she emerged into the kitchens. The wooden crates sat where she’d last left them, piled before the servant’s entrance for pick-up the next morning. More scratching preceded the sight of a furry figure pacing around the crate, it’s nose pressing insistently at the cracks in the wood. Old Peggy glanced over at her and gave a forlorn whimper.

“Hey, old girl,” Eliza whispered as she moved forward and knelt down beside the crate. The hound plopped back on her haunches at her side, still sniffing hopefully at the crate. A lump formed at the back of Eliza’s throat as she wrapped her arms around the dog.

“It smells like him, huh?”

Old Peggy’s eyes were bright in the moonlight streaming through the door. She nudged the crate with her nose again, as though encouraging Eliza to open it. Eliza dropped a kiss to the dog’s head.

“He’s not in there, old girl.”

Though the dog couldn’t possibly have understood, she laid down with a great snort. Eliza followed her example, pillowing her head on the dog’s warm fur as she slipped her fingers into one of the spaces in the wooden crate. Silky soft material with some raised embroidered details met her touch: one of his waistcoats, she identified easily. But it was cold now, no more than lifeless, useless fabric.

A whimper of her own fell past her lips.

“He’s not in there.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hamilton owed somewhere between fifty and sixty thousand dollars at his death, and the trustees of his estate had to do a great deal of finagling to keep Eliza and the children from losing the Grange. With the death of Eliza's father, her financial situation was even more precarious. I don't know whether the estate was forced to sell his clothing, but the idea of her having to watch all his things be packed up and shipped away really broke my heart. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! All feedback is very much appreciated!


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